


Bright

by quietcoast



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, M/M, St. Agnes, bed sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 13:50:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13366053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietcoast/pseuds/quietcoast
Summary: The singing had stopped, which meant that Ronan actually might come up to see him, and Adam refused to be caught off guard. It was absurd, honestly, that Adam’s reality now included things likewaiting in bed for Ronan Lynch,even though it wasn’t that kind of waiting or that kind of bed. The way his eyelids doubled as leaves some nights would be less surprising to the Adam of one year ago than this inexplicable urge to run his hand through his hair again, just one more time, before Ronan knocked on the door. Or, well, maybe not.





	Bright

The night was not silent, but it was holy. Or, no, it wasn’t holy, either, not really, even with the round, deep-veined echoes of Midnight Mass coiling up to Adam’s little room. Maybe it was just _night_ , night as it had always been, even if its contents were something more. Something calm, something bright. Round yon Virgin, and all that.

The song needed a good round of editing, starting with the adjectives. _Night, night—all is_. Ronan probably wouldn’t like that. Or, he would. Adam huffed something that felt like a laugh inside his body, but just sounded like a huff outside of it.

Adam stretched, long legs, curved back, pointed toes, and then collapsed into it. He stared for a moment at his feet: they were gaudily striped, because they were clad in the world’s fuzziest, thickest, loudest pair of tube socks, courtesy of Blue Sargent. They had been thoughtfully crafted out of three or four different colors and textures of yarn, all wound together into one strand and then knitted into a cozy mess. Adam was horrified by them, and pleased. They made his feet and ankles look as though they belonged to someone else, someone more flamboyant and indulgent and fun, and Adam kind of liked how they made him feel. Also, they were warm.

Lying how he was, on his side, extended and propped on his elbow and curving at the waist, Adam allowed himself to be comfortable. He glanced again at the color explosion socks, then at his thrift store pajama pants and white, long-sleeved thermal shirt, one of those that came in the three-packs at Wal-Mart, and felt unmoved. Still just Adam Parrish, then. But, like a snowdrift being formed, his mind stung him with a whiteout image of Ronan coming in at that exact moment and finding him, and Adam reevaluated the scene from Ronan’s imagined perspective. This time, he lingered on the lamplight washing over his bed, the tented book by his hand, the mess that was his hair, the obscene angle of his hip before it dropped off into the concave slope of his waist. He was laid out like a painting. Maybe that was the kind of thing Ronan would want to look at. Adam liked how that made him feel, too.

He liked it too much, probably; he flipped onto his stomach, tucked his feet under the blanket, steepled his fingers onto the book’s spine. The singing had stopped, which meant that Ronan actually might come up to see him, and Adam refused to be caught off guard. It was absurd, honestly, that Adam’s reality now included things like _waiting in bed for Ronan Lynch_ , even though it wasn’t that kind of waiting or that kind of bed. The way his eyelids doubled as leaves some nights would be less surprising to the Adam of one year ago than this inexplicable urge to run his hand through his hair again, just one more time, before Ronan knocked on the door. Or, well, maybe not.

All at once, Adam felt disappointed in himself, in his frivolity. He was wasting time thinking about things that didn’t matter. He was tired of reading, but he was always tired, wasn’t he? If he studied just a little bit more, worked just a couple extra shifts over break, spent just a few more hours digging his hands deep into Cabeswater’s viscera, maybe the spring semester wouldn’t gut him like the fall one had. He either needed to try for some sleep, or do something real, and that was the truth.

Instead, he pressed the side of his face into his flat pillow in a way that made it kind of hard to breathe. His back hurt from bending over someone’s POS Ford Escort all day, because automotive disasters did not acknowledge the observed birthdays of any Father, Son, or Holy motherfucking Ghost, and neither did Adam Parrish, if it came to that. Money was money, and he had the lower back pain to prove it.

He shifted his hips to try for some relief, but it didn’t work, and it didn’t feel like anything _else_ , either, goddammit. Just like that, the part of him that had been shivery and excitable and thinking dangerous thoughts about Ronan Lynch was gone, deflated like one of those festive blow-up yard ornaments, transformed instantly from a glowy Grinch inflatable to a plastic puddle left lying in the Henrietta dirt. Adam was resigned to it as soon as it happened.

He closed his eyes.

Something cold blew across his forehead—probably not a draft, just _something_ —and he took a long breath in. The breath felt like sighing, but backwards. Quieter. It was the kind of thing he did a lot. _Yeah_ , he thought at the cool ribbon of whatever, a beat too late. He assumed it was Cabeswater, coming to smooth out his self-pity wrinkles, or, more likely, to remind him about that little creek he’d been meaning to take a look at. _Tomorrow_ , he promised, though he wasn’t sure if he meant it.

Then the door to Adam’s apartment _thunk_ ed shut. It was old, heavy wood, the kind of door that opened soundlessly but invented a new type of percussive instrument every time it closed. Adam dragged open his eyes and was halfway to sitting up before he recognized the silhouette in his doorway. _Not Cabeswater, then. Just Ronan letting all the cold air in_. Probably, anyone else would be alarmed by some razor-sharp delinquent tromping snow all over the floor like _whatever_ , but Adam was unthreatened. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been afraid of Ronan Lynch.

“How’d you get in? I locked the door.” Adam offered this instead of a greeting; his words were slow tonight, syrupy, and Ronan shot him the look that meant he’d noticed.

“I received a lock pick kit as a Christmas gift. I decided to try it out on that ancient fucking door.” Ronan clunked his boots around in one more circle for good measure, just in case the floorboards hadn’t already started to warp, and then kicked them off into a corner. He then regarded the ring of melting snow he had created around himself with disgust, as if some other jackass had come along and trapped him.

“What genius bought you lock picks?” Adam asked, watching with mild interest as Ronan remembered that his legs were stupid-long. He used them to pick his way out of the situation as if he were playing a particularly boring game of Twister. Adam rolled his eyes.

“I did. Obviously. Merry fucking Christmas.” Ronan sprawled onto the untainted floor by Adam’s mattress in one tailbone-crushing swoop, and then flipped Adam off. The maneuver showed off Ronan’s knobby, neon-bright gloves, which Adam had not noticed before. They could be described as “semi-fingerless”, meaning that someone had thoughtfully crocheted them to cover every finger but the middle one. “Like my hand gear, Parrish? I got them from that goblin thing. Or whatever.”

“I—Blue? Are you talking about _Blue_?”

Ronan shrugged. “Like I said, man— _or whatever_.”

“She would rip your head off if she heard you say that.” Adam stuck a foot over Ronan’s shoulder, right near his face. “I recognize the symptoms of Blue’s handiwork, anyway. My new socks are pretty stylish, don’t you think?”

Ronan snorted. Then, with a brittleness to his voice that meant he was expecting information he would not enjoy, asked, “What did you get her?”

Adam flipped his foot back and forth until Ronan scowled and knocked it away. “Bag of lace scraps from that craft store by the laundromat. You?”

Ronan relaxed. Must’ve been an okay answer, then. “Shitload of leaves from Cabeswater: Fall Edition. Then I put them in one of those expensive fuckin’ Hobby Lobby boxes. You know the ones. Just to piss her off.” He laughed at his own joke, then let his head fall back to rest against his hunched shoulders. Ronan had enlisted Gansey to help him re-shave his head a week ago, and now it was peppered black instead of fuzzing over. His scalp was very bare, in a way that seemed like an unpleasant decision to make in December.

Adam thought about how cold Ronan’s head must be, and then he thought about touching it to find out, and then he didn’t. And then he did, because fuck it—Adam was not built to think of a thing he wanted and then leave it undone.

He rested the backs of three fingers against Ronan’s head. It was cold. Ronan’s eyes flickered open for a moment, but he didn’t move away. “Blue should’ve made you a hat instead,” Adam observed. “You do know that it’s wintertime, right?”

“Ha ha. I have an aesthetic to maintain, Parrish.”

Adam flipped his hand over, so that his palm was pressed against Ronan’s ear and his fingertips scratched against new stubble. That dangerous feeling was back in his chest. “What aesthetic is that? Frostbite poster boy?”

“Yeah. You caught me.” Ronan’s sarcasm, though biting, was diluted by the way he leaned into Adam’s hand, just a little bit, before sitting back up.

Adam collapsed back onto the bed. “You going?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, someone got water all over the floor.”

Ronan smiled thinly. “What a prick.”

“I meant, you can’t sleep there.”

Ronan was silent for a long minute, and when he spoke again, they both understood something that they hadn’t before. “So what’d you get me for Christmas?” Ronan asked jokingly, knocking his knuckles against Adam’s knee.

“Oh—yeah, I’d almost forgotten.” Adam turned, rustled around in the plastic bin he used as a nightstand, and came back with something small and heavy. Ronan pushed himself up the couple of feet it took to sit on the edge of Adam’s mattress. “It’s a Christmas ornament,” Adam explained. The thing he handed to Ronan was indeed a Christmas ornament, but it was also a dark, rough hewn raven with its beak cracked wide, perched on top of a skull. There was a little loop attached to the raven’s head, where someone had passed a ribbon through so that the ornament could be hung. “Found it at the thrift store,” Adam continued. “Guess someone thought it wasn’t festive enough. Personally, I don’t see the problem.”

“That person was a fucking idiot,” Ronan agreed. He hung the ribbon from his finger, and watched for a moment as the ornament spun in a slow arc. The orange light from Adam’s bedside lamp lit the edges of the raven’s feathers a dull tangerine. “Thanks, Parrish. I will cherish it always.” The words were made to sound sarcastic, but the way Ronan kept the ornament clutched tightly in his hand told a different story.

“I figured as much.” Adam stifled a yawn. “What’d you get me?”

“A Lamborghini.”

“Ronan.”

“Sorry. I meant, fifty grand in cash.”

“ _Ronan_.”

“Okay, okay.” Ronan grinned lazily, then lay back across the bed, across Adam’s legs, and closed his eyes. “Something to help with gas mileage. I left it in the Shitbox. You can look tomorrow.”

The amusement in Ronan’s voice made Adam think that the gift was less like “something to help with gas mileage” and more like “dream object designed to extend a tank of gas indefinitely”. That sounded like a Ronan kind of gift, something that was extravagant and impossible, but not purchased and therefore not against the rules. Rather than respond with words, Adam tensed his calves up and made his feet into points again, just to feel the pressure of his muscles pushing against Ronan’s back. Ronan shifted against them, making himself heavier, grinding his spine into Adam’s tibia. In their particular language, this counted as a conversation.

The dim light of the room made Ronan into a shadowed, sleek creature, pristine in his still tucked-in dress shirt and his dark slacks. If he ever made half the effort on his appearance for Aglionby as he did for St. Agnes, Adam thought, he might be in better standing with what he dubbed the “uniform police”. Then again, Ronan only showed up to class if there was some opportunity to disrespect school rules, so it wasn’t exactly surprising that the church got this rare, streamlined version of Ronan, and the school got the Ronan who left off his tie and could spit acid.

“I was getting ready to go to sleep. Before you broke into my apartment, I mean.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Adam offered the information and waited.

“Cool.” Ronan accidentally-on-purpose let his hand fall back to slip against Adam’s thigh before he sat up.

“I have work in the morning. I’m goin’ to bed. Do what you want,” Adam repeated, and switched off the lamp.

“Cool,” Ronan said again. He sat for a minute, waiting for any further statements or instructions, and then loosened his tie. He pulled it over his head, a noose in reverse, and yanked his shirttails out of his waistband. Took off his gloves, fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. He did it all slowly, facing away from Adam, waiting to be accused of something or told to stop.

Ronan was an apparition in the light let in by the blinds that covered the room’s sole window, a ghost in the wintery one am half-light. Adam was glad when the dress shirt came off; something about the white tank top Ronan had been wearing underneath, something about his tense shoulders, made him seem more real. Ronan’s hands were clamped onto the edge of the mattress, and that was real, too.

Adam felt brave, like he wanted to touch Ronan’s skin, and he felt tired, like he didn’t have time for Ronan to have a crisis if it prolonged the moments until Adam could be asleep. He solved both problems by inching forward enough to wrap his arms around Ronan’s waist, which was not allowed. One of Adam’s hands stayed flat against Ronan’s stomach; the other pulled Ronan’s belt free from its buckle, tugged at it until it slithered free of every confining belt loop.

Under Adam’s hand, Ronan’s breathing was rough and shallow. “Adam,” Ronan said, and it wasn’t quite a question, even though it wanted to be.

Adam’s pulse was fluttering. He leaned his nose and forehead against Ronan’s back. He felt like he was having an out of body experience. “These’ll wrinkle if you sleep in them,” Adam said into Ronan’s ribcage, fidgeting with Ronan’s waistband, ever practical even when doing things that were un-Adam-like. “I’m sure Gansey does all your ironing. It doesn’t seem very fair.” Adam moved both hands down to pop the button on Ronan’s pants, then slid the zipper down while he was at it. Ronan cursed under his breath.

“C’mere,” Adam said, soft. “I wanna go to sleep.”

“Yeah.” Ronan swallowed, drew in a shaky breath, pushed his hips up to slide them out of his slacks, which he then kicked onto the floor. “Yeah. Fuck.” Ronan allowed himself to be tugged backwards, rendered horizontal, pillowed against and into. Adam passed his hand over Ronan’s stomach one final time before drawing back.

The blanket was barely wide enough for both of them. Ronan’s hands were freezing; he turned over, then over again, and shoved them under Adam to get warm. Adam twitched in response. “I’m getting you a fucking electric blanket next Christmas,” Ronan muttered. “It’s always freezing in here.”

“It’s not so bad,” Adam replied. “How about this: I’ll commission Blue to work on a blanket at the same time I ask her to make you a hat, how does that sound?”

“Fuck off, maybe,” Ronan answered darkly. Adam laughed, and, eventually, fell asleep. Ronan did not, but it was better than if he had.

The night, then, was silent, or was holy, or just was.

**Author's Note:**

> It....is not Christmas time. Here's this thing anyway?


End file.
